Hall bench

This solid mahogany hall bench has lived in my foyer for just over a year. I built it over a couple of weekends as a place to put things on my way in and out, especially the bike stuff that I’ll inevitably need or leave behind on my mountain bike rides.

Just the bench. One of the critical dimensions was its width - it had to be wide enough to fit my longboard.

I built the accompanying small dovetailed tray as a place to put my waterbottle collection.

Detail of the dovetail joinery on the box. The sides are vertical grain fir, and the bottom is mahogany plywood.

Detail of the drawbored tenon joinery connecting the rail to the leg, and the breadboard ends.

The bench and its intended application.

A different angle of the full setup.

This was an interesting project because of all the constraints I had to work with: The width was determined by the length of the skateboard; whereas the height and depth were determined by the clearance of the pedals of the bike that would be hung next to it. I chose mahogany as the wood since it matched the backing pieces of the bike storage rack, as well as being pleasant to work with. It just so happened to be available in a dimension that required little to no work before cutting and joining it. Since I have a very small workspace with no powered planer, jointer, or table saw, it’s a massive time saver to be able to use lumber straight from the store, with just a bit of cleanup on the machine marks. It would be nice to be able to work from rough lumber but in a hand-tool-primary workshop the cost to benefit ratio just isn’t there. That’s not to say that I haven’t done it - I have - but for me, the cost-to-benefit ratio for re-sawing and dimensioning lumber by hand isn’t there, except for very small pieces.